Damn Rather?s Blather

Watching Dan Rather unravel this week over George Bush?s ?unpardonable sins? while serving in the National Guard has been reminiscent of Peter Arnett?s vocational suicide on TV while maniacally distorting the fall of Baghdad in March 2003.

Hey Dan-O ? Mo Rocca is more sincere and substantive when interviewing a crack prostitute about China?s economy than you?ve been in your latest ?work?. Your ideological desires have created a dementia, Mr. Rather, that has made us, uhhh, concerned ? about your balance, both journalistic and emotional.

Experts warned Dan Blather and staff that the document on which he was staking his reputation and his network?s name was virtually certainly to be a fake. It seems the specialists have three major problems with the documents:

2. The National Guard has never used Big Chief tablet paper for their official proceedings.

3. George Bush?s name wasn?t even on the report. The service man cited in the statement was not George W. Bush but Jorge W. Buscocho, a Puerto Rican National who later became a back up dancer for Charo during her 1989 Cuchi-Cuchi-If-You-Can tour.

Rather than cease and desist from his imaginative, big, ?tell all? story, Mr. Rather decided the prudent course of action should go something like this, ?Well, we know that the documents are complete and utter horse dung, cooked up at a Kinko?s in Abilene, Texas by some Stephen King character.

Nevertheless, we want them to be true ? and some people seem to think these bogus papers do have a legitimate claim. Yep ? that?s all we need. All right, now get out of my office you lackeys, load up the teleprompter and let?s stick it to the President, right up the tail pipe!?

It really seems as if Rather has passed the point of no return in his biased reporting. We couldn?t balance out his lean to the left if we tied a six ton block of cement with a 100 pound steel cable to his right ear lobe and smashed his left foot with a sledge hammer. Dan wants ? no, he needs -- to believe those Bush besmirching reports so badly that he blew through cautionary roadblocks like Nick Nolte and Glen Campbell would blow through a case of Sammy Hagar?s best Cabo Wabo on a wild weekend.